EVENTS

Edward Snowden clarifies his situation

I was reading the Wall Street Journal that the conference hotel provides and came across this article today that suggests that there are splits between the three groups that are providing support to Edward Snowden: Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald, and Snowden’s father’s husband and wife legal team of Bruce and Mattie Fein. Mattie Fein said that they were concerned that the other two groups were not acting in Snowden’s best interests and were working for their own benefit and even trying to make money off him.

This looked suspiciously to me like agitprop, trying to sow suspicion between Edward Snowden and the others. Sure enough, Greenwald produced a blistering denunciation, calling Mattie Fein a liar and that her statements were ‘defamatory’.

Meanwhile, Snowden himself issued a statement saying that the media were being misled. Here it is in full:

It has come to my attention that news organizations seeking information regarding my current situation have, due to the difficulty in contacting me directly, been misled by individuals associated with my father into printing false claims about my situation.

I would like to correct the record: I’ve been fortunate to have legal advice from an international team of some of the finest lawyers in the world, and to work with journalists whose integrity and courage are beyond question. There is no conflict amongst myself and any of the individuals or organizations with whom I have been involved.

Neither my father, his lawyer Bruce Fein, nor his wife Mattie Fein represent me in any way. None of them have been or are involved in my current situation, and this will not change in the future. I ask journalists to understand that they do not possess any special knowledge regarding my situation or future plans, and not to exploit the tragic vacuum of my father’s emotional compromise for the sake of tabloid news.

Thank you.

He more I read about Snowden, the more he seems to be in command of the situation and not a pawn in the hands of others. As Greenwald says, “Snowden is not 14 years old. He is a very strong-willed, independent, autonomous adult and is making all his own choices about who he deals with and who represents him.”

An internal audit provided by Snowden to The Washington Post shows the agency has repeatedly broken privacy rules or exceeded its legal authority every year since Congress granted it broad new powers in 2008.

In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — reports used as the basis for informing Congress.

The FISC’s chief judge told the Post that the court could rule only on the material it was given.

“The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said in a written statement to the Post. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing (government) compliance with its orders.

It sounds like it is time to shut this whole program down, award Mr. Snowden the Congressional Medal of Honor, and prosecute a few officials for perjury.